The Bridge of Sighing Rain
Where tempests weave their threads of silver tears,
A lonesome traveler, cloaked in twilight’s guise,
Ascends the bridge where Time, a ghost, appears.
The stones, once proud, now crumble into sighs,
Their ancient backs bent low by vanished years,
And through the mist, a spectral voice replies—
A murmur from the past his soul still hears.
He pauses where the railing, frail and worn,
Betrays the weight of secrets it has borne.
A glint of ivory ’neath moss’s veil
Catches his eye—a letter, pale and torn,
Its edges kissed by rot, its script grown frail,
Yet pulsing still with love’s unyielding tale.
The rain, soft-sibilant, dissolves the wax
That once had sealed a heart’s most tender vow.
Unfolding it, he feels the world grow lax,
As shadows part to show what lies below:
A script that trembles like a winding track
Through fields of memory where wildflowers grow,
Each word a thorn that Time cannot roll back,
Each line a dirge for joys the damned outgrow.
“To you, whose shadow haunts my waking breath,
Whose absence carves a chasm deeper than death—
I write this final verse with hands that shake,
For dawn has sworn to steal what night bequeaths.
The doctor’s clockwork verdict leaves no wake:
My heart, once yours, its final beat will break
Before the moon, tonight, her throne forsakes.
Yet fear not, love—though flesh to dust may fade,
I’ll meet you where the stars compose our shade.”
The traveler’s breath congeals in frosted air.
A name, long buried, claws from earth’s despair—
“Eleanor,” the ink, though bleached, declares,
A whisper from the grave his soul now shares.
The bridge, the rain, the ghosts of lovers’ prayers
Collide within him, tearing ancient layers.
For ten long years he’d fled her spectral stare,
Yet here, her voice still hums in nature’s air.
He sinks to knees embraced by lichen’s chill,
The letter pressed to ribs no hope can fill.
The rain becomes a symphony of screams,
Each drop a needle stitching shut his dreams.
For he, the fool who’d bartered love for streams
Of gold and glory, wakes to life’s extremes:
Her hands, once warm, now bones beneath the loam,
Her laughter drowned in Time’s unfeeling foam.
A vision flares—the night she pled in vain:
“Stay,” she had wept, “or love will be our bane.
The road may gild your name in foreign lands,
But absence is a thief none can withstand.”
He’d kissed her brow and slipped from her weak hands,
While Fate, that grinning hag, cut tender strands.
Now, on this bridge where all his roads began,
He clutches proof of death’s indifferent plan.
The heavens crack with thunder’s bleak refrain.
The river, swollen, churns with bitter rain.
He leans o’er edges where the void extends,
The letter flutters like a wounded friend.
“I come, Eleanor—let this be our amends.”
The wind inhales… then steals his final breath.
Below, the waters clasp him in their depths,
Two lovers merged where light and darkness blend.
Dawn finds the bridge a mourner, draped in gray,
The letter lodged where stone and shadow play.
A passerby retrieves the sodden page,
But reads no grief in words the rain erased.
Yet sometimes, when the storms in twilight rage,
Two phantoms dance where sorrow once was laid—
His voice, her sigh, in endless serenade,
Entwined where dreams and truth are both betrayed.
“`
